Making Up for Lost Time

by Karin Kallmaker

  The other woman was dressed in a tennis outfit that screamed “woman of leisure.” Ugh. Her legs just weren’t the type Val usually like to ogle in tennis skirts. Not at all the sort she preferred to drape over her shoulders. She was willing to bet that under those two-hundred-dollar cross-trainers the woman had bird feet to match the rest of her.

  The cook looked stunned. If she didn’t stop blinking she’d give the whole thing away.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Val said. “Am I interrupting something?” She hooked her thumb into her belt loop and gave Birdy her best parted-lip smile. The one a friend had said could make Phyllis Schlafly think twice. “Haven’t I seen you around?”

  Birdy was flushing—anger or lust, who cared? Val turned the same smile on the cook but was met with a blank stare.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” the cook finally said. Geez, she’d never make a good liar. As if, Val’s conscience reminded her, that was a bad thing.

  “I’ll be going,” Birdy snapped, and then she flounced out the door with one last disdainful look at the premises.

  “Was it something I said?” Val gave her full attention to the cook, who leaned heavily against the counter.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yeah, so.” Val shrugged. “I’ve never liked people who tortured small, defenseless creatures.”

  The flash from the cook’s eyes seared Val in vivid green. She took a step backward.

  “For your information,” the cook said through stiff lips, “I am perfectly able to defend myself. I don’t need your help. And who the hell are you anyway?”

  Val assumed her usual bravado. “Valkyrie Valentine, at your service.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “I’ve got a birth certificate to prove it.” Abruptly she got that sensation again—twice in one afternoon for a moment of madness was a record. Her head swirled with a desperate idea. Her mouth began operating before her brain engaged. “Can you cook? I mean really, really cook?”

  “No, I can’t. Not a bit. I run this place so I can mutilate vegetables with impunity.”

  Val wrinkled her nose. “I get it. Irony.”

  “Sarcasm. Irony is not knowing the difference.”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  “I will.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Fine.”

  They stared at each other. Val was thinking that Jamie must think her insane. Say something reasonable, she urged herself. Anything at all. “I need a cook.” Not a great start, but it was something.

  “I have a job.” Jamie glanced meaningfully at the stove, then gasped. “Shit.”

  To Val’s amazement, Jamie seized a frying pan and flipped the contents just by tweaking her wrist just so. She then carried a bubbling saucepan to a large blender and trickled the contents into a swirling mess of something red—it could be berries, Val guessed.

  The waitress poked her head in. “Two more cacciatores. And I’m opening another bag of mixed greens. When you get a chance we could use another Thousand Island.” She glanced curiously at Val but ducked out again.

  Jamie left the blender running and came back to the stove. She flipped the contents of the pan again—wow, things could really be golden brown, Val realized—then said, “Did you have a point to make?”

  “Yes.” Val stepped closer and succeeded in making Jamie look her in the eyes, at least for a moment. “I need you and you need me.” This is crazy, she told herself.

  “How so?” Jamie reached into an overhead warmer for cooked chicken breasts.

  “I need a cook. You need a builder.”

  “You’re a builder.” Jamie stopped slicing the chicken long enough to look Val up and down.

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover. I can widen that doorway.” She stepped back to glance at the hallway. Messy, but doable. Not cheap, though. Carpet had to go. It would look good with skylighting, too. “And the stairwell. I can rebuild this place from the ground up. In fact, I need to. In a pretty short time frame.”

  “Do you always listen to other people’s conversations?”

  “Yes. It’s what I live for.”

  “And what would you get out of this arrangement?”

  “I get to show the place off. I get someone to do the cooking behind the scenes while I show it off. I become famous. You get your renovations. Everybody’s happy.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Yes. Oh, and you’ll need to make shrimp scampi at least once. I have a good recipe.”

  “So do I. But no one said I was agreeing to anything.”

  “Are you willing to talk?”

  “Only if you have a psychiatrist’s note.”

  “And here I was thinking you didn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “And here I was thinking you didn’t have your wits. Look, I’m busy.” Jamie ladled a pungent red sauce, thick with enormous sliced mushrooms and artichoke hearts, onto the sliced chicken breasts, which had been fanned out across the plate. She added a ring of raw red onion to each, then set them up under lamps on the pass-through.

  “Mind if I look around?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Val did a quick tour of the botched mess upstairs, then made her way back to Jan. “Sorry I was gone so long.”

  Jan pointed at the menu. “I’m thinking of having the spaghetti carbonara if it doesn’t have tomatoes. I think we’re here on Italian day.”

  “Cacciatore for me. And I need a big favor. Well, I need some understanding.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “I need to stay here for a few hours. Maybe overnight. I have an idea, a big, fabulous idea about renovating this place, but I haven’t convinced the owner.”

  “I have to be in Pacifica first thing in the morning,” Jan said. “And if we wait here much longer we’ll be bumper-to-bumper getting through Napa.”

  “Well, maybe I can take a bus home tomorrow.”

  “You’re nuts.” Jan was definitely a little miffed, but she had a little bit of quirk to her lips.

  “So I’ve been told.” Val glanced at the ceiling joists. Hmm. “I really need to see if I can work this out. I’ll tell you all about it when I hire you to do the fine work.”

  “Then I’d be sleeping with the boss. I’ve never done that before,” Jan said. To Val’s relief, she was smiling.

  “Forgive me for ducking out on the end of our weekend?”

  “Yes, on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “That we have dinner and breakfast at my place this Friday.”

  Val grinned. “I can live with that. It’s a sacrifice, but I can do it.”

  Jan threw a packet of Sweet ‘n’ Low at her. “You are nuts.”

  Jan didn’t know the half of it.

  Chapter 6

  “I don’t see why we have to lie. I’m very uncomfortable even thinking about it.”

  Val sighed. This woman was way too straight for a dyke. “Let me explain it one more time.” Each time she explained it, Val got more terse. Jamie made it sound so… illicit. “I need to prove to this magazine chain that I can garden, renovate, decorate and cook. With me so far?”

  Jamie pursed her lips. “You need to use words with fewer syllables.”

  “Now I recognize the sarcasm.” Val could purse her lips, too. “I don’t know why this is so difficult to conceptualize.”

  “Because you can’t cook. It’s like lying on a job application.”

  “Let me worry about my own personal brimstone.”

  Jamie’s eyes said she was certain Val had a lot to worry about in that department. “You think you can just pretend to cook? No one will ask you how a dish was prepared? You think you can talk the talk without breaking a few eggs?”

  “What a beautifully mixed metaphor,” Val said sweetly. She was starting to have second thoughts. “How hard can it be?”

  Jamie glowered. “If it’s so easy, why can’t you do it?”

  “I don’t k
now about can’t, I’ve just never applied myself to it.”

  “Then all you need is a crash course in cooking from somebody. I’m busy.”

  “I also need a place I’ve worked on myself.”

  “How many lies have you told?”

  “They’re not lies. Just a little literary license. Do you know how many travel articles are written by people who never leave home?”

  “Do you know how many cookbooks are written by people who don’t test the recipes themselves? I hate that.”

  “Oh, so literary license is taken in the cooking industry, too?”

  “And if everyone jumped off a cliff—”

  “How old are you?” Major regrets. She had not expected Jamie to be so… so… stodgy.

  Jamie’s eyes flashed. “I have a dream. It’s not a big dream. It’s just a little dream. But it’s my dream. Someday I’ll write a cookbook. And it will be authentic. I’ll test all the recipes myself. It will be easy to follow and it will be an underground success. Like The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.”

  “Broccoli? Enchanted? What does that have to do with you cooking while I renovate? I just mean a temporary thing!”

  “We’ll be found out,” Jamie said stonily. “It would be mortifying.”

  “You think that getting your renovations done by a professional for free is not worth the risk of some embarrassment?”

  “One-hundred-percent free?”

  “Well, my time would be free.”

  “How good are you?”

  Val’s smile turned smug. “As good as your Breakfast Pie.” She was pleased to see a hint of a smile touch Jamie’s expression.

  “This is insane.”

  “I’d be done, say, by New Year’s. If I gave it my all and then some.” She would find ways to put Sheila off until then. She’d invite Sheila for shrimp scampi on New Year’s Eve. They’d dine in style, tour Val’s masterpiece renovation, enjoy crème brûlée in front of the fire—she’d install a fireplace if she had to—and the rest would be entertainment history. This would be easy.

  Jamie was shaking her head. “I’m insane to even be listening to you. And I should be making salad dressing for dinner and caramelizing onions.” She rose as if to end the discussion.

  “Won’t you at least sleep on it? I gave up a car ride home to talk to you.” Val batted her eyelashes ever so slightly. Sometimes it worked, even on the most stodgy of personalities.

  Jamie had been going to say no, Val could see it in her eyes. But instead she shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

  “This woman is for real?” Liesel poured out a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

  Jamie dropped contentedly into the welcoming easy chair and accepted the mug. “I don’t know. She claims she writes a column for Sunrise. But she also admits that she makes stuff up about cooking. So how do I know if she makes up stuff about construction. and renovations?”

  Liesel was rummaging through a basket full of magazines. “I bought a copy of it not too long ago. It should be in…here it is.” She thumbed to the table of contents. “Well, I’ll be. Wall Glazing,’ by Valkyrie Valentine.”

  Jamie took the magazine. There was no photo but it did tend to suggest that this woman was not a complete lunatic. Maybe, with a little practice, she wouldn’t be a total loss at cooking. It seemed to Jamie that glazing a wall took almost as much patience and skill as icing a cake or forming pastilles. “Well, maybe she’s not an idiot.”

  “I’d be happy to talk to her, too, if you want me to.”

  Jamie sipped the wonderful chocolate, then smiled fondly at Liesel. “I’d love you to. And thank you for not saying I told you so about the repairs.”

  “Jacob will. But it’s so right that you bought it back. Em would be very pleased to know that you did. Maybe you paid too much, maybe not. Does it matter?”

  “I want the place to be livable again. It feels empty without people upstairs. And the boarders provide a steady income stream too. It’s a little less stressful buying eggs for the week if you know you’ve got a base of customers for breakfast. Remember Jill? She traded rent for working in the kitchen, too. I sure could use that.”

  “Everything will be fine, liebchen. Drink your chocolate and stop worrying. You’re as bad as Em.”

  Jamie did as she was told, then devoured some savory biscuits that Liesel supplied, complete with paprika butter.

  “These are yummy. Mind if I swipe the recipe?”

  “I’d be honored. And now I’m going to bed.”

  “Night-night.” Jamie knew she had to head for bed herself or she’d never hear her five-thirty alarm, but she was too wound up with possibilities to go to sleep right away. She eventually stretched out in the dark and envisioned the Waterview restored to working condition. If Valkyrie Valentine could do that without Jamie having to hock her soul, then so be it. What was a little deception along the way?

  Jamie was leaning against the kitchen door when a thump at the service entrance brought her out of a snatched moment of relaxation. Valkyrie Valentine was clanking into her kitchen with a toolbox and a large level under one arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Jamie planted herself between Val and an oven full of delicate puff pastry for one of Jacob’s charters.

  “Widening your door two inches or more. I borrowed the tools.”

  “You can’t make a mess in here. Sawdust, and who knows what in the food—”

  “There won’t be much of a mess, just some ruined paint and wallpaper. Might get a few paint chips on the floor.”

  Jamie blinked in astonishment as Val planted the hook end of a hammer behind one of the doorjambs and pulled experimentally. “We haven’t agreed to anything—”

  “I’ll do this with no strings attached. Fair warning, you’ll need to paint and I can’t guarantee that this jamb isn’t going to split, so you might need to replace it too. Your door will be wider by more than two inches, too.” Val ran a flat black thing over the wall next to the doorjamb. It looked like a remote control to Jamie. A couple of small lights lit up and Val grinned. “Thought so. Like most old houses the spacers are closer together near a door.”

  “But—”

  “It’ll be more like four and a half inches wider. I’ll just use the next spacer for the jamb. Sometimes things work out easier because of the non-standard construction. Oh, and you can’t paint or tidy this up until the inspector’s okayed it. We’ll probably need to pull a permit retroactively, but we can do it for the whole renovation for a single fee, then.”

  “I haven’t agreed to—” The rest of Jamie’s sentence was drowned out in the groaning shriek of the doorjamb splitting away from the wall. Nails screamed as Val’s hammer relentlessly pried them from their beds.

  Keeping wide-eyed track of Val’s progress, Jamie kneaded bread dough, chopped broccoli for salad, made a new batch of blue cheese dressing and stirred together a simple syrup for berry topping while Val systematically separated the doorjamb from the wall and then sawed away the wallboard. To Jamie’s amazement, the wallboard peeled back a little more than four inches to reveal another wall stud.

  Val snorted. “Good news, this is all dry. I don’t see any creepy crawlies, either.”

  “That’s good,” Jamie said. She tried to sound knowledgeable. She peered out into the dining room, but there were still only a few people, all locals. They’d forgive the noise.

  Val was examining the wood she’d pulled off. “One of these is worthless, but I can use the other. You want me to put it on the dining room side of the door—it’ll look better than nothing.”

  “Please,” Jamie said. She poured the simple syrup into whirling olallieberry puree and left the blender to run for a few minutes while the syrup cooled. She pulled three beautiful double-sized pound cakes out of the upper oven.

  “That smells wonderful,” Val said.

  “Winter shortcake,” Jamie explained. “Pound cake and berry syrup smothered in whipped cream with macerated berries on top.” She wiped h
er hands and scootched around Val to add the dessert to the menu board under “Today only.”

  Dar looked up from her magazine. “Bill used to carp at me for taking a load off when there were only a few tables busy. Didn’t matter to him that I’d filled the sugars, topped off the ketchup, checked the napkins and wiped down the chairs for good measure.”

  “Bill was a horse’s ass,” Jamie said with more than a little heat. It was the morning lull—the few customers there were quite happy, so why shouldn’t Dar have a rest?

  “He didn’t tell you a bunch of stuff, huh? Well, seems like this Val woman is a godsend, then. I loaned her Harry’s old tools, I hope that’s okay. She’s gonna have that door done before the lunch crowd.”

  Jamie glanced over her shoulder. The work was progressing rapidly, but she still gave Val a narrow glance. Chatting up Dar, was she? That was sneaky.

  Val caught Jamie’s glance and wondered what she’d done wrong. She’d have asked if her mouth hadn’t been full of nails. It had been a while since she’d driven this many nails by hand, and so quickly. She’d set a mental goal for the project of an hour and she wanted to meet it. She wanted Ms. Stodgy Snotty Jamie to be impressed, goddammit. She wanted to get her hands on this inn and bring Sheila Thintowski out here to see it.

  Dar had proved to be a goldmine of information. She’d learned that Jamie Onassis had just bought her aunt’s inn back from a loser, that the aunt was a saint and a terrific cook and had just died, that Jamie wasn’t really her niece, that the aunt was a lesbian, that Jamie had had a romantic setback early in life and was probably still not over it. Val had enough intuition to know that Birdy from yesterday was the source of the romantic setback. What Jamie might have ever seen in her was beyond Val’s comprehension. It didn’t bode well for Jamie’s sense.

  Dar wouldn’t say anything negative about anybody, though, even when Val had led her in that direction. She had gone so far as to say that Birdy—Kathy—was the aunt’s daughter and that the two hadn’t gotten along. Small wonder. But today as she worked Val had a little sense of the halo Emily Smitt had left on this place. If enough grime was scrubbed off, it would shine again. Jamie clearly had the talent for that.